North Carolina leaders are talking once again about collecting tolls from drivers to finance a long-deferred, multibillion-dollar rebuild of Interstate 95 - and this time they sound serious.
"You should collect that toll now," said Sen. Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat who is the Senate's president pro tem. "There's not a worse road in North Carolina."
The four-lane freeway across rural Eastern North Carolina carries fewer cars and counts fewer crashes overall than busy interstates 40 and 85 through the urban Piedmont.
But the pavement takes a pounding from trucks that make up 30 percent of its load, a heavy share.
And I-95 claims more lives in crashes - 179 people killed in the past five years - than any other highway in the state.
Most of its 182 miles were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and I-95 has seen almost no improvement since then.
Now the state Department of Transportation is developing a plan to phase in a string of overhaul projects up and down the corridor, and to pay for them by imposing a toll on drivers.
"In order to upgrade I-95 to where we think it needs to be over the next 20 to 30 years, we're looking at a $5 billion price tag now," said Gene Conti, the state transportation secretary, "and really no way to pay for it under the existing revenue streams."
The first likely candidate for tolls is a clogged 25-mile stretch from Fayetteville in Cumberland County to I-40 at Benson in Johnston County, where DOT wants to expand I-95 from four lanes to six or eight.
By next spring, Conti wants to have a proposal ready for the legislature and Gov. Bev Perdue to start construction and toll collection on parts of I-95 - perhaps as soon as 2012.
"One of the options we're looking at is all-electronic tolling," Conti said. "There wouldn't be any stopping. Everybody would be using transponders, or video enforcement."
The state's first modern toll road, the Triangle Expressway now being built in western Wake County and Research Triangle Park, will operate without cash tollbooths when it opens in 2011 and 2012.
Electronic billing
Video images of license plates will be used to send bills to car owners who do not use dashboard transponders - electronic devices that use radio signals to identify toll-road customers.
I-95 cost estimates have risen since 2003, when DOT engineers prescribed a $3 billion overhaul to add lanes, widen shoulders, replace old pavement and rebuild cramped interchanges.
The DOT said drivers could cover the cost by coughing up a $3 toll every 30 miles along the way, from border to border. That idea went nowhere.
In 2006, legislators proposed an I-95 compact with Virginia: The two states would collect tolls at their shared border and split the proceeds. Then-Gov. Mike Easley squelched the toll talk.
Since then, at the legislature's behest, the DOT has won permission from the Federal Highway Administration to collect tolls for improvements to I-95. The legislature would be asked to change a state law that allows tolls only on new roads.
Virginia seeks tolls
Virginia's governor, Bob McDonnell, requested federal permission in April to set up anI-95 tollbooth just north of the state line, to pay for improvements as far north as Fredericksburg.
Basnight favors collecting tolls near the Virginia border only. He doesn't see enough political and business support for tolls farther south.
"Virginia is preparing to do what we should do," Basnight said. "I-95 needs major, major improvement. It is a fact that we have no money to speak of to allocate toward that project."
State spending on road improvements has lagged because of dwindling revenue from taxes on fuel and car sales. DOT officials expect to have only $11 billion in state and federal money to address transportation needs worth about $54 billion between 2015 and 2020.
Like the N.J. Turnpike
State Rep. Leo Daughtry, a Smithfield Republican, can hear the trucks barreling down I-95 a few hundred yards from his home.
"It's like the New Jersey Turnpike almost, now," Daughtry said. "It's packed with people going high rates of speed to destinations a long way off, to Florida or New York."
Tolls might offer the only possible source for fixing I-95, he said.
"A user fee would really be burdensome for people in my county who use it for commerce, like a farmer from Benson carrying his tobacco crop to market in Smithfield," Daughtry said. "But I don't know of another dependable source of money that would keep up the road for a long period of time."
North Carolina is the first state to build an all-electronic toll road, and Conti says the new technology could give the state flexibility to limit the effect on local residents.
"You might not have more than four or five gantries to read transponders [and license plates] along 182 miles," Conti said. "So if you're just going 20 miles from the Rocky Mount exit to the Wilson exit, you might not have to pay anything. That's just a possibility."
Pros and cons
Tourists and truckers who travel I-95 along the eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida have plenty of experience with tollbooths and E-ZPass transponder lanes. Drivers pay cash or electronic tolls on parts of I-95 in seven northern states from Maine to Maryland.
"I don't mind paying," said Brian Nasuta, 22. He and his brother took a break at a Cumberland County rest stop last week on a drive to Florida from their home in Enfield, Conn.
"I know where the money goes. We see the improvements they make up north. The roads are very convenient," Nasuta said.
Michael Acree, a Northampton County truck driver, says the state shouldn't ask drivers to pay tolls on a road that was built with tax money. He makes three trips each week alongI-95.
"In North Carolina right now we pay 30.3 cents per gallon in road taxes," said Acree, 59. "I think it's poor management that we're in the condition we're in now. We've already paid for this highway."
Recent improvements
The DOT used some of those tax dollars over the past couple of years to place jacks under 15 of I-95's notoriously low overpasses. The bridges were hoisted an extra 18 inches above the roadway to stop tall trucks from banging into them.
This month the state is spending a few million in federal stimulus dollars to put a fresh asphalt layer on 12 worn-out miles in Johnston, Nash and Wilson counties.
But every inch of added pavement brings the trucks an inch closer to those low overpasses, increasing the chance of a crash that can shut down the freeway for hours.
"We really can't overlay it any more," said Wendi Johnson, a Wilson-based DOT engineer who oversees construction in four of the eight counties that include part of I-95.
"We're hoping to buy time now" with repaving, she said. "Because we just don't have the money to do what really needs to be done."
